From: Jay "Avatar" Piette (avatar42@erols.com) ...And then a blue moongate appeared... Out of it stepped a man that was destined, along with his friends, to take over this thing called the Internet. Since he last left Drag/NET, the Avatar had no need for computers in Britannia, but still he used them... Knowing that someday the call would come again. The call to action. The call that led to the defeat of Sadamm Hussein... The call to RULE THE WORLD!!! From: Arthur "Back Slash" Levesque (bs@boog.org) The Avatar called out to his former comrades across this almost magical global communications medium called the Internet... Bemused, the man known once as Backslash noted the message. Suddenly, his office seemed less real, seemed to fade around him... The message, the NAME, seemed to ring long-forgotten bells in Backslash's memory... Of the times suppressed, the times forgotten, when he returned to the mundane world. And then reality reasserted itself; Arthur was sitting in his office where he worked for a government contractor outside of Washington DC. The moment passed, and Arthur deleted the message along with several give-rich-quick schemes and porno web site ads which also cluttered his mailbox. He moved on to the next message, and returned to work. Later, he would not recall ever having read the message... From: Jim "GWIII" Bannon (gwiii@tiac.net) ...The comatose body of the GWIIISter sleeps. After the "incident" with Janet, his eyes vacant of all life. As a gift to his old friend, Backslash had long ago hooked GWIII up to a computer with experimental wetware. GWIII's mind flourished on the net and GWIII knew of the Avatars call before it was a finished electronic bleep of Email. Without a glimmer of hope in his eye, GWIII's body, at last, smiles. {to be on the move again} thinks GWIII {that is the ticket, no more lying around all day thinking about taking over this or that, but to actual action. Ah how I miss it.} GWIII's Cybronic connections start humming along as he designs an object of indispensable use to his comrades. In the room Surrounding GWIII, Doctors and nurses are suprised to see the long dormant face of GWIII Smile. From: Arthur "Back Slash" Levesque (bs@boog.org) The Avatar waited, but received no answer to his summons. What had happened to his companions? What should he do now? Arthur continued his work on a new way of inventorying real property for the Army. As he typed rapidly, unbelievably rapidly considering he still used only two fingers, his code filled the screen. He was completely unaware that every character he typed appeared on another screen just a few miles away... "He's still working on schedule, and none of his personal habits appear to have deviated in the last week since he received that message from the Avatar." The speaker wore a black suit and black glasses, even though he was in a darkened room in the basement of an unremarkable building just outside of Washington DC. "By all accounts, he has already forgotten the letter; and our conditioning is holding. His former memories and personality are completely dormant." "Very good," said another man, who by his tone could be easily identified as the first man's superior. "Keep watch on him. If his true personality shows any signs of awakening, kill him. But, if he is contacted by any of his former associates, try to capture them alive. They may lead us to the others; and I won't rest until they're all rounded up and taken care of." Unlike the Avatar, who has just returned to this plane of being; and Backslash, who has no recollection of his former D00Dness; GWIII has tried to keep track of his former comrades... It wasn't easy, as they deliberately made themselves scarce to avoid Big Brother's attention, and a few slipped even through GWIII's cyber fingers, but GWIII still could try to round up a few of them. Odd that they hadn't already answered the Avatar's summons, though... From: Jim "GWIII" Bannon (gwiii@tiac.net) ...As Backslash was being watched, GWIII monitored both sides of the conversation through the Cybernetic Highway that was a gift from Backslash. {Yes, it gives me freedom, but at what cost?} GWIII wondered as he looked at the files of Backslash's programming. He fiddled with a little calculator that he always kept handy in his cyberhideout. {Hum, interesting...} With that the spirit that inhabits the mind of GWIII races out across the Galactic Web to smite Avatar with a huge "We'll Do IT" sticker. From: Arthur "Back Slash" Levesque (bs@boog.org) Of course, while the Avatar was admiring the great big "We'll Do It" sticker that the GWIIIster affixed to his forehead, he didn't notice the "Get On With It" sticker holding up a "Kick Me" sign on the Avatar's 12th-century keister... From: Jay "Avatar" Piette (avatar42@erols.com) The Avatar roamed the streets of Washington, DC. He felt kind of weird. Everything was different than he remembered. Severe disorientation set in. The buildings were much taller, the weather was much warmer, the cabs were more checkered... and the women were more voluptous! He knew not why he was here. He started running. He had just had a memory flash and he wanted to get away from it. The flash seemed to be a single word... It began with a... ummm... Z... he thinks. Yes... suddenly as the Avatar ran (he THOUGHT he was under the influence of a Speed spell) he tripped on a homeless person and suddenly the word ZORK came to his head. This rang a familiar bell... YES! He must contact Zork and try to make sense of all of this. The Avatar headed to where his instincts told him was home... what he only knew as "The 14th floor"... Quickly, he ran to the telephone... He then realized that he should not, in fact, know what a telephone is, but it seemed like the thing to run to. The Avatar reached for the phone to call the person only known to him by name. As he reached for the receiver [Although the Avatar would not know that this part of a telephone was indeed called a receiver, it makes the story flow a bit better at this particular point. -ed.] the phone made a loud sound. The Avatar picked up the receiver and said "Yes?" "Hello," said the voice. "I am Sadaam Hussein... And I have a job for you." From: Arthur "Back Slash" Levesque (bs@boog.org) Arthur (The Freak Formerly Known As Back Slash) walked through Washington DC. The cherry blossoms were in bloom and the always made the city beautiful by covering the bums and corpses in aromatic pink splendor. He froze as he saw a familiar face in the distance. "Hey, Avatar!" he tried to yell, before the conditioning locked down. He turned away and admired the pretty flowers. The sniper put down his binoculars. He was on top of a building one block away. He took off his black ski mask and smiled. "As long as Arthur stays brainwashed and under my control," Don Messier laughed, "they'll NEVER drag me into THIS story!" "You're still alive?" Avatar asked Saddam. Then he thought again. "Wait a minute... We were all killed! How did we get our lives back?" {Silly person} GWIII thought, in the secret language he used for thinking things to himself, {this is the Internet. Who needs a life?} GWIII floated through the wall and scared a flock of pigeons, the only species on Earth with naturally-occurring telepathy. "So, what's that job?" Avatar continued... From: Jay "Avatar" Piette (avatar42@erols.com) ...and thus did Tio appear, spinning slowly to a stop at the foot of the d00ds, pale in demeanor and mumbling about the bloody peasants. The Avatar was still walking the the street of DC kind of confused as to what the hell was going on... he had received a call from Hussein who simply said "Your ULTIMAte goal in this existance is about to come to fruition." Then, as he picked up the latest issue of "DC Computer User," a word rang though his head... SHEEP. SHEEP. He shrugged it off, assuming it was just a bad remnant of the drugs he had taken while in college. He was wrong. Very, very wrong. The Avatar went to work at Animal Planet (call your local cable company for availability) like he did every day of the week. When he got there he had to review several programs, as usual... The first program was "Sheep in the Pacific Northwest" -- an especially boring documentary. The second was "Sheep: America's Greatest Natural Resource" -- this sucked too. The third was titled "Sheep of Rhode Island." The sights were horrible. He was shocked and so were The Avatar's co-workers at the scenes in this docu-drama... About 30 minutes and 42 seconds into the film, it centered in Northern RI... The Avatar passed out. His last words were "Send me back... Must go to the beginning." A co-worker of the Avatar knew this meant something, as she remembered his ramblings about a small group he knew from northern RI... She took it upon herself to dump The Avatar on a Southwest Airlines plane (60 dollars both ways!!) to TF Green airport...